Petition on Crime of Genocide against African People in the United States

We, the undersigned, charge that the United States government has historically committed the crime of genocide against African people inside its borders, and continues to do so today, often with the complicity of many U.S. citizens.

It is in the interest of all freedom-loving peoples worldwide to unite with African people, colonized within the borders of the United States, in our struggle for our basic human rights of freedom from state-imposed violence and oppression and for self-determination and liberation with economic and political control over our lives and communities.

We will show that despite the heroic struggle of African people for our civil and constitutional rights during the 1960s, African people exist today under conditions in which the U.S. state powers not only fail to protect our health and well-being as expected under full citizenship, but continually inflict state or state-supported violence and terror on us.

Although millions of African people perished on the slave ships on the journey from Africa to the Americas, and though millions of African people were slaughtered by European and American colonizers throughout Africa, and though hundreds of millions of Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere were murdered by Europeans, it is notable that the word genocide did not exist in the English lexicon until its coinage in 1944 in response to the Nazi government’s mass murder of European Jewry.

This petition recognizes that the term genocide is applicable to Africans in the US for the conditions they face historically and today.

This petition is based on these conventions of International Law:

1. The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide;

2. The United Nations Charter;

3. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights;

4. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;

5. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;

6. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Evidence:

In this petition we present a synopsis of documented evidence proving the crime of genocide by the United States government against African people. The examples presented apply to every aspect of the definition of genocide and fit the punishable acts of genocide as defined by the U.N. Convention.

The U.S. government is responsible for mass murders, mass and discriminatory imprisonment, and oppressive conditions in nearly every aspect of life, including state-sanctioned violence and murders, education, family life, reproduction, employment, healthcare and freedom of political assembly for African people in the U.S.

1. Recognition by the international community and progressive and friendly states and peoples that European and United States powers committed genocide against African people during the times of colonial occupation, kidnapping, enslavement and exploitation, and that genocide against African people continues today inside of the United States.

2. Support for an International Tribunal to make judgment on the crimes of genocide against African people and solidarity with African self-determination.

3. Reparations to African people estimated at $14 trillion to African people inside the US alone, according to studies conducted at the University of Connecticut.

4. The right to self-determination and the liberation and unification of Africa and African people on the continent of Africa and those who have been forcibly dispersed around the world.

5. Black Community Control of Police inside the U.S. and the end to end to U.S. colonial military occupation of the black community.

6. The creation of an International monitoring body covering the daily police violence against African people in the U.S.